Jesus From the Gospel of Luke

QUESTION: What can we learn about Jesus from the Gospel of Luke?

ANSWER:

What we learn about Jesus in Luke directly issues from the themes he developed. Among many more, we learn that:

• Jesus personifies the values of God's kingdom (Luke 1:32, 2:28-32, 49, 4:21, 5:20, 27),
• As God's Christ (Luke 20:41), He alone determines the definition of and membership in that kingdom, whether it's choosing His inner circle of disciples (Luke 6:12-16), answering questions from skeptics (Luke 5:33-39), doubts from believers (Luke 7:18-35), or skepticism about the afterlife (Luke 20:27-38), among others
• He skillfully turned any question or belief into peerless teaching (Luke 7:20, 10:25, 29, 11:1, 12:13, 15:2, 18:9)

We also learn that He defines our roles as disciples: among others,

• discipleship demands our self-denial (Luke 9:23-27)
• repentance of sin is necessary to enter discipleship (Luke 13:1-8)
• absolutes define it (Luke 13:22-30)
• fruitfulness is essential to it (Luke 13:6-9, 19:11-27)
• divisions in families sometimes accrue because of it (Luke 12:49-53)
• no compromise with it is allowed (Luke 9:61-62)
• immediate entrance into it is encouraged (Luke 9:59-60)

A teaching especially relevant to our materialistic society, we learn that Jesus valued wealth only for its spiritual potential (Luke 12:21, 16:9, 25 18:22-25, 19:8-10).

Above all, we learn in Luke that Jesus mastered all the amazing, and otherwise divisive, diversity He encountered by focusing people's attention on Him. That achieved reconciliation even among unbelievers, as Luke 23:1-12 illustrates. If we wonder why diversity divides the world, while Jesus united diversified peoples, it's because we have eliminated Jesus as the common personality around which we can all congregate. Only He can be the adhesive cementing a common cause.